Posted on: 11 September 2020
'We Work Together' is a podcast about working in partnership to improve health and care in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, and the relationships between the people involved. In this episode, communications manager Ben Thompson caught up with the joint chairs of the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership's Clinical Forum - Doctor Bryan Gill, Chief Medical Officer and Responsible Officer at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Doctor James Thomas, chair of Bradford District and Craven Clinical Commissioning Group - to ask them about the Clinical Forum's role, achievements and ambitions.
What else has been happening this week?
Healthy Hearts
The Partnership is delighted to announce that the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Healthy Hearts initiative has been awarded the ‘Cardiovascular Care Initiative of the Year’ at the HSJ Value Awards 2020. The initiative, led by our Partnership, delivered by Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network (Yorkshire and Humber AHSN), works with health and care professionals across the area including GPs, community pharmacists as well as voluntary organisations and community groups to join forces to better care for people with CVD.
This year’s judging process followed a different format due to the coronavirus pandemic. Finalists were asked to create a video presentation to submit for review by the judging panel, which is formed of a wide range of well-respected figures from across the UK healthcare community.
The initiative has been awarded this prestigious award in recognition of the outstanding contribution to delivering better services and driving better outcomes across their organisation over the past 12 months.
The success of the work started in Bradford. Being part of the Partnership means we can scale up initiatives, such as Healthy Hearts, across West Yorkshire and Harrogate, to deliver life-saving results. This is after all what the Partnership is all about, sharing learning, good practice and importantly helping more people to live a long and healthy life.
World Suicide Day
World Suicide Prevention Day takes place on 10 September every year, hosted by the International Association for Suicide Prevention and endorsed by the World Health Organisation. In England, nearly 100 people die each week as a result of suicide and the national figures published by the Office of National Statistics on 1 September 2020 show that Yorkshire and the Humber region had the highest suicide rate in England at 12 suicides per 100,00 population over a 3-year period between 2017 and 2019. In West Yorkshire and Harrogate, there has been an increase from 10.6 per 100,000 between 2016-18 to 11.88 between 2017 and 2019.
The Partnership has identified 10 big ambitions, in the Partnership’s Five Year Plan and the Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Five Year Plan. Reducing the number of suicides across the area is one.
The main aim of the Partnership’s Suicide Prevention Strategy is to develop working relationships with partner agencies to provide an evidence based, practical framework for suicide prevention across the area to reduce suicide. This supports and complements the work taking place in the six local places (Bradford district and Craven; Calderdale, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield).
The Partnership has been working hard to reduce suicide and the devastating impact on families, carers and friends across West Yorkshire and Harrogate since 2016/17.
Work has also begun on the Partnership’s staff suicide prevention campaign, which will launch in November for three months with the aim of educating, raising awareness, and inspiring peer-to-peer support and most importantly, helping to save more lives.
At the same time, a new collaborative project ‘Great Minds’ with State of Mind Sport will see partner teams deliver workshops with men at risk of suicide and serious self-harm. You can find out more about the Great Minds project in this video.
Read more: Partnership supports World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September 2020
Developing a suicide reduction campaign
Reducing suicide by 10% across West Yorkshire and Harrogate by 2020/21 and achieving a 75% reduction in targeted areas by 2022 is one of West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership’s 10 big ambitions. At the February 2020, System Leadership Executive Group meeting it was agreed that the Partnership would lead on the development of suicide reduction campaign targeted at staff.
A project group has been in existence since summer 2019. Representation includes public health consultants / council colleagues; programme directors from the mental health and improving population health programmes; Healthwatch CEOs; psychologists; Trust communication leads; VCS representatives and people with experience of suicide.
To develop the most effective campaign, 2-hour virtual workshops will take place in order to learn from experts and staff experiences across West Yorkshire and Harrogate and to support the co-produced approach. Anyone can attend a workshop session and it is open to any colleagues.
The workshops will take place during September 2020, with the campaign hopefully ready to launch in November for three months. If you can spare time to add value and share your views to this important campaign, please sign up to a co-creation workshop below:
GROUP A: Colleagues with experience running suicide reduction initiatives
- Session option 1 (Max 6 attendees): 15.09.20 at 10.30am – 12.30pm - RSVP to Group A session option 1
- Session option 2 (Max 6 attendees): 17.09.20 at 3pm – 5pm - RSVP to Group A session option 2
- Session option 3 (Max 6 attendees): 21.09.20 at 9am – 11am - RSVP to Group A session option 3
GROUP B: People with lived experience and/or affected by suicide
- Session option 1 (Max 8 attendees): 16.09.20 at 4pm – 6pm - RSVP to Group B session option 1
GROUP C: A group made up of WY&H Communication and Engagement Network
- Session option 1 (Max 8 attendees): 21.09.20 at 1pm – 3pm - RSVP to Group C session option 1
GROUP D: Staff (especially those working in areas of high risk)
- Session option 1 (Max 8 attendees): 22.09.20 at 10am – 12pm - RSVP to Group D session option 1
- Session option 2 (Max 8 attendees): 23.09.20 at 3pm – 5pm - RSVP to Group D session option 2
GROUP E: Organisation policy makers and HR leads
- Arranged telephone interviews - RSVP to Group E arranged telephone interviews
Help map West Yorkshire and Harrogate’s suicide reduction campaigns and resources
Regardless of your availability for the co-creation workshops, you can still help inform this campaign by sharing examples of, and best practice, suicide reduction campaigns and resources you have seen. We want to amplify the good work taking place in our areas, and not unnecessarily reinvent the wheel.
Each session will include a specialist working in the field who will provide details of local support services should colleagues need them. Colleagues from the Samaritans will also be available.
Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Programme
Phase 3 re-set and forward planning
Following the first submission of the NHS planning returns (known as "Phase 3"), the Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism programme is putting in place ‘deep dive’ discussions with mental health commissioners, finance and planning leads across our area.
A steering group has been set up to inform the development and implementation of a workforce strategy for psychological professions. If anyone is interested in contributing or wants to find out more please email sonya.
Prevention and Management of Violence and Aggression teams from across the Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism collaborative and independent sector have been working well and sharing information about their current practice. We are building up a picture of the similarities and differences before we start analysing where the opportunities lie to provide greater consistency for people who access care and staff.
Autism and learning disabilities
Survey: Thank you to everyone who supported and promoted our recent survey of how people with autism experience access to urgent and crisis care. The survey has now closed with more than 200 responses from across the area; analysis is underway and will be reported shortly.
Sharing good practice in autism and/or neurodiversity – case study project with Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network
We have been working with Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network to identify a range of projects and programmes across the region that are able to demonstrate a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of young adults (14-25) and adults with autism and/or neurodiversity.
How your organisation can get involved
Share a case study about how you have been working to improve living arrangements, physical health and raising awareness - email Rebecca.
The future of shared records in West Yorkshire and Harrogate
Our regional digital team will lead the rollout in partnership with the central Yorkshire and Humber Care Record team
Digital is integral to delivering the transformation we need in health and care services. The NHS is undergoing digital transformation at pace. Covid-19 has also become a catalyst for speeding up digital transformation.
In the summer of 2019, the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Digital Programme embarked on a journey to develop a digital strategy that clarifies the vision, principles and outlines the digital programme would take to delivering digital transformation across the Partnership. The digital strategy was developed with direct input from the Chief Information Officers and Chief Clinical Information Officers from across West Yorkshire and Harrogate, as well as input from key stakeholders within the Partnership such as system leadership executive group, clinical forum and Partnership priority programme leads.
A key component of our digital strategy is shared care records. In July 2018 Yorkshire and Humber was awarded £7.5M in funding, by NHS England as an exemplar to kickstart a Local Health Care Record over 2 years. In this time the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record programme has created a suite of solutions to facilitate the sharing of information across organisations in the region to improve care and the patient experience.
The first set of Yorkshire & Humber NHS organisations are connected to the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record and a number of others are in the process of connecting. The work so far has been delivered by a central team and now the responsibility for further roll out will be led by the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership Digital Team. Our aim is to connect all West Yorkshire and Harrogate health and care organisations as quickly as possible and so we are launching a piece of discovery work to undertake the detailed planning to make this happen. In order to connect organisations, we need to understand in detail the current local set ups to enable us to schedule the necessary technical and non-technical work.
Over the last two years the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record programme has delivered:
- Population health management capability which went live on 1 April 2020.
- Shared records system, called 'System of Systems'. This is now built and operating on the Google Cloud Platform. A number of Trusts across Yorkshire and Humber are using the system and several others are in the final stages of testing and connecting. In West Yorkshire and Harrogate, Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust are using the new system to deliver transfer of care documentation to support patient care with transfers from ambulance to emergency department – with huge benefits. Two other Trusts in West Yorkshire and Harrogate - Bradford and Harrogate, are part of the first wave of organisations to take on the technology and testing and work is progressing. The Partnership’s Digital Board has agreed work to see all organisations connected for use.
This work was paused during Covid-19 and restarted in June 2020 with the following priorities:
- Priority #1 - Sharing of “alert” data. A technical readiness assessment is being undertaken with each organisation to understand their current state of readiness for connectivity.
- Yorkshire and Humber Care Record Team have defined a set of patient data items as core data. Each organisation that connects to the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record will provide this data set for other practitioners (with defined needs and permissions) to view.
- Maternity data sharing. There is a national mandate to share data between maternity providers, where multiple organisations are providing treatment to a patient. The hospital Trusts in West Yorkshire and Harrogate have embarked on a project to use the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record technology to share a summary of maternity data between each organisation. The West Yorkshire and Harrogate Digital Team will be actively engaging with and working with all organisations in our region over the coming months.
Test and Trace Programme
The West Yorkshire, Test, Trace, Isolate Programme met on Friday 4 September. It includes colleagues from public health and the NHS. The senior responsible officer for the programme is Martin Barkley, CEO for Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
The Government has announced £500 million of funding for rapid-result COVID-19 test trials, which will include wider community testing in the trial sites. The money will also support the scaling up of testing capacity ahead of winter. Existing trials in Southampton and Hampshire, using a no-swab saliva test and a rapid 20-minute test, will be expanded through the new funding.
An update on Friday 4 September saw Wakefield come off the Government’s ‘watch list’. Leeds was added to Public Health England's weekly watch list after its infection rate rose.
A new and updated Customer Logging Toolkit for businesses that collects customer details for Test and Trace is now available. The toolkit includes a suite of materials on customer logging that local businesses can use, including suggested copy, posters and social media assets.
Department for Education have created a new Back to School campaign that aims to reassure parents and students that schools and colleges are ready for all children to return in September.
As schools and colleges return for the autumn term and welcome back pupils and students, the Medical Director of Public Health England, Yvonne Doyle, and Chief Medical Adviser of NHS Test and Trace, Susan Hopkins, wrote to school and college leaders with further advice regarding coronavirus testing and shielding.
Read more: letter from PHE and NHS Test and Trace to school and college leaders (on the gov.uk website)
Discussing cancer symptoms – guidance for primary care teams from Gateway C
Gateway C is a free online cancer education platform developed for GPs, practice nurses, GPs in training, health care assistants, physician associates and other primary care professionals across NHS England. Discussing suspected cancer symptoms over the phone can be challenging. Gateway C has created a downloadable PDF resource for primary care teams, in partnership with The Maguire Communication Skills Training Unit.